


Trust in Me

by darthneko



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-19
Updated: 2001-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 08:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1812202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tiny glimpse into the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust in Me

The late afternoon sun, spring bright and uncomfortably warm after the cold of winter, was reduced to a thing of filtered gold and liquid colors within the heavy walls of the holy place. Dust danceed, iridescent, in rainbow streams that slipped from the great stained glass windows to pool across the floor like running paint. When he stepped into them the light dyed his shoes and ankles in bright swaths of jewels, gold and crimson and saphirre blue, only to slip back to the reality of slightly worn leather when he stepped out once more.   
  
There were statues there, great carven things that towered over him, haloed in gemstone colors as the light streamed across their solid shoulders. He had looked at each in turn but there was one which he lingered by, a slender faced woman robed like the pictures he had seen in books, a fold of her veil drawn across her hair. But unlike the other statues of pious women she kept her face lifted, defiantely staring outwards with cold stone eyes rather than bowing her head in prayer.   
  
He had decided he rather liked her. He didn't know her name - there were no names carven into the base of the statues to tell one saint from another. She had probably died tragically a long time ago; most saints did. But she had a spirit that the sculptor had caught in her pretty face and of all of them, cold sculpted stone to a one, she was the only one who looked as though she might, were he to turn away, step down from her pedestal to tread the flagstones and bathe sandled feet in the puddles of light upon the floor.   
  
He liked that thought. But no matter how long he turned away, she was much too smart to step down and let herself be caught by mortal eyes.   
  
"You're getting to be too big of a boy to be making up fancies like that," his nurse had told him. "A stone is a stone. Rocks don't just get up and move on their own, not like people." But he knew better. He had seen the stones move. And he did think that saint, with the light casting holy haloes around her head and her solemnly beautiful face, might move and walk if she would only never mind that he was there.   
  
He wondered what they did at night, when the cathedral was dark and no one was watching. Did saints dance? Probably not. But she, he thought, would be a good dancer. She would kick free of the sandles they had carved on her slender feet and slide the veil from her hair, sweeping it behind her as she whirled across the stone floor, her hair tumbling free. And maybe in her memory she would hear the music of flute and drum and finger cymbols and tunes that she had known when she was only a stone, before they took hammer and chisel and gave her the shape she had now.   
  
He had dared to reach out and press one hand to the carven folds of her robe. He didn't think she minded.   
  
The sound of movement and footsteps in the vestibule made him look up as the great doors were pushed open. And then saints and stones and dancing were all forgotten as he ran eagerly forward, his shoes clattering against the flagstones, to be caught in strong arms that swung him up and around until he was laughing, loud and delighted, the world a multicolored blur of light and shadows that spun and whirled around him. "Papa! Papa!"   
  
\-------   
  
There is nothing quite like the sound of a child's laughter. A man can forget all of his sins in that sound, feel them washed away and absolved in a simple delight from which adults are barred. Cast from the holy land, we stand at its gates, forever peering vainly back towards the innocence we once knew. A child's laughter can, for a moment, open that gate once more.   
  
Children are made in the image of their parents, as the church would have us believe we are made in the image of their gods. He has his mother's sun kissed hair and golden smile. So very beautiful; it almost pains me to watch him. When he grows to a young man he will break hearts with that face as he breaks mine now - break them or capture them, like flies to a spider web, and he need only reel in the strands.   
  
His laughter, echoing back from the vaulted ceiling and the hard stone walls of the cathedral, brings a holiness to this place that all of the prayers of the pious fathers and worshiping faithful could never manage. He consecrates it in the bright sound, chasing away the half remembered ghosts of heavy incense and voices in the choir. They build their churches on the bones and relics of the past, hoping to create a new era free of heretics - but the past is not so easily swept away and who decides what is heretical?   
  
A child's innocent belief is power. He could waken these stones to the blood soaked dances of the mother of us all, if he only had the strength. The priests tried to claim this city in the name of the church but her legacy is far older then they - this will be *his* church, his altar and circle, and the spellsongs carved in every stone will sing his name.   
  
He will be glorious. My bright star. My son.   
  
His hands tug at my sleeves as I set him back on his feet, his upturned face full of smiles and trust. "Are we leaving, Papa?"   
  
I put a hand to his hair, silken soft beneath my fingertips, and resist the urge to swing him up once more. He is no babe in arms any longer, to be carried about on my hip.   
  
They grow so quickly. No one ever told me.   
  
"Not just yet," I tell him gently. "I still have things to do."   
  
He nods and his small hand slips into mine, tiny perfect fingers wrapped around my own. "Are you going to make the stones move?" he asks breathlessly and I can only smile.   
  
"Not this time, son."   
  
His face falls slightly in disappointment and I am so very tempted to give in. To reach out to the soft murmmur of the Dark and stir it into song, to breathe life into the unliving and call forth the souls of the dead in spells that would make grown men shake with fear - all for the simple delight and curiosity of a child, so that he might smile and laugh once more.   
  
Are all parents so besotted?   
  
But then he brightens once more and his tug against my hand draws us both into the church proper, down the long aisle of saints and martyrs in their dusty alcoves. He stops at one and I should be embarassed that it takes me several moments to identify Saint Ienna. The sculptors took pride in their work here - they all, cut forever from marble and stone, look as though they are almost real.   
  
"Papa, look," he is saying, pointing to the statue. "Don't you think she should dance, Papa?" He has the seriousness of his age, ernest and caught up in the moment, when all of life is but a string of moments that are still few enough to count. "I think she wants to. But she won't, not while we're watching."   
  
In any other child it would be a flight of fancy, a make-believe game of imagination. But he has learned all of the lessons I have taught him and to him it is no game - he means every word of it, just as if he were proclaiming that the sky outside shone blue.   
  
"I don't think she can, any more," I tell him softly.   
  
He leans forward, reaching to place his free hand on carven folds of marble stola. "Maybe she's just forgotten how," he says. "But she wants to. She remembers."   
  
His hand is still clasped in mine and through that small palm I can feel it, the Dark whispering softly, low and smooth like the touch of a lover. His words, on the lips of a child, waken something in it and for a moment I can hear it, the bright, wild sound of ancient music and the guttering light of flames buried deep in the memory of the stones themselves. My breath catches in my throat, the pang I feel equal parts pride and awe.   
  
Modern priests in velvet robes tried to make this place their own. But he... he will brush aside their trappings and lay bare the spirit beneath. His eyes will see into the souls of the very ages.   
  
"Maybe," I say softly, "maybe you can help her remember, some day."   
  
"Really?" He turns back to me and is naught but a child again, bright eyed and smiling. "Teach me how, Papa? Please?"   
  
"Later," I promise gently, touching the gleaming strands of his hair once more. "Not right now. You have other things to learn. Come upstairs with me."   
  
So obedient, the perfect child. He never needs to be told more than once, turning immediately to follow. It is not lack of will - he is no weakling. It is only respect and his own desire. I am more blessed than I shall ever be able to count in him.   
  
There is a door in the upper floor of the church which is no different, to the look, than any other door. Wood and silver and iron, solid and functional. He skips ahead of me, childish enthusiasm and energy getting the momentary better of manners, and stops before it expectantly. I gesture him to go on. "Do you remember what I showed you last time?"   
  
He nods, all excited and serious, his slender shoulders straightening importantly as he turns back to the door. The gutteral sound of ancient Kildean is softer for being on his tongue, recited carefully and without flaw. His child's mouth lisps gently around the shape of the words; one of his front milk teeth is starting to loosen. He showed it to me only days before, with the same pride with which he now shows me his easy recollection of a complex seal that would hold a small army at bay.   
  
I mouth the words with him to give them substance. The Dark stirs and the seal falls free, the door swinging easily open. He turns back to me excitedly. "I did it, Papa! I did it!"   
  
"Yes, you did," I reply, and when I bend down he comes into my arms, all warm and right and the sweet scent of honey. I press my cheek to his hair, holding him close. "You did indeed. That was well done."   
  
He beams from the praise. The weight of his body in my arms is trusting and perfect as I lift him. The steps to the door are few and then we are, both of us, across the threshold. I can not help the small tremor inside of me.   
  
There is no turning back. I knew that, long ago, but rarely have I felt it so keenly.   
  
He is looking downward, to the floor beneath my feet that is strewn with painted sigils and lettering. His brows are drawn down in concentration, the very tip of his tongue protruding pink from between his teeth as he puzzles out the words. "Is it a summons, Papa?"   
  
"Of a sort," I tell him. "It's very important - very powerful. You understand?"   
  
He nods, terribly serious. I shall burst for my pride of him. When I set him down he stands quiet, not disturbing the marks near his feet. "Come stand in the center with me," I tell him, and he is so very careful when he crosses the lines of the circle.   
  
I kneel down beside him, bringing our faces to a level. "You've learned everything so well, son," I tell him, brushing back the heavy fall of golden hair from his forehead. "You've made me so proud."   
  
His eyes light up like the noonday sky and he leans happily into my embrace. Even when I slide the blade from my sleeve and slip the sharp steel easily between the fragile bones of his ribs that light remains for long precious moments. I watch every one of them, engraving them in mind and memory forevermore.   
  
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "Forgive me, Sydney."   
  
He draws a wet breath, his mouth opening soundlessly. Blood bubbles up across the soft bow of his lips, bright crimson against pale skin as it bursts, trickling down over the curve of his chin. I kiss it away, hot and salty, the way I have kissed the countless scraped knees and bruised limbs of his fast fading childhood. "I'm sorry," I repeat, but the light is dimming in his eyes and the flutter of his heart beneath the thin skin of his throat is failing as his soul slips slowly away.   
  
Kneeling in a circle of runes older than any living man, I gather my firstborn child close to my chest and whisper the words of succession. I can feel them bleed out of my mouth like blood from my veins. The soul could be no truer than this, and the Dark will give it back to him, bind it to him such that none can take it from him ever again.   
  
He will be the salvation of us all. But I know, as his blood stains my hands and lips and seeps wet through fabric to brand my skin - I know I will never again see that light in his eyes.   
  
My son. My Sydney.


End file.
